Spanish language in the United States

 ( Spain–united States Relations ) 

After the Mexican War of Independence from Spain, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming also became part of the Mexican territory of Alta California. Most of New Mexico, western Texas, southern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, and the Oklahoma panhandle were part of the territory of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. The geographical isolation and unique political history of this territory led to New Mexican Spanish differing notably from both Spanish spoken in other parts of the United States of America and Spanish spoken in the present-day United Mexican States.

Mexico lost almost half of the northern territory gained from Spain in 1821 to the United States in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). This included parts of contemporary Texas, and Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, California, Nevada, and Utah. Although the lost territory was sparsely populated, the thousands of Spanish-speaking Mexicans subsequently became U.S. citizens. The war-ending Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) does not explicitly address language. Although Spanish initially continued to be used in schools and government, the English-speaking American settlers who entered the Southwest established their language, culture, and law as dominant, displacing Spanish in the public sphere.

Once Puerto Rico was granted autonomy in 1948, even mainlander officials who came to Puerto Rico were forced to learn Spanish. Only 20% of Puerto Rico's residents understand English, and although the island's government had a policy of official bilingualism, it was repealed in favor of a Spanish-only policy in 1991. This policy was reversed in 1993 when a pro-statehood party ousted a pro-independence party from the commonwealth government.

Mexicans first moved to the United States as refugees in the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1917, but many more emigrated later for economic reasons. The large majority of Mexicans are in the former Mexican-controlled areas in the Southwest. From 1942 to 1962, the Bracero program would provide for mass Mexican migration to the United States.

At over 5 million, Puerto Ricans are easily the second largest Hispanic group. Of all major Hispanic groups, Puerto Ricans are the least likely to be proficient in Spanish, but millions of Puerto Rican Americans living in the U.S. mainland are fluent in Spanish. Puerto Ricans are natural-born U.S. citizens, and many Puerto Ricans have migrated to New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, and other areas of the Eastern United States, increasing the Spanish-speaking populations and in some areas being the majority of the Hispanophone population, especially in Central Florida. In Hawaii, where Puerto Rican farm laborers and Mexican ranchers have settled since the late 19th century, seven percent of the islands' people are either Hispanic or Hispanophone or both.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 created a community of who opposed the Communist revolution, many of whom left for the United States. In 1963, the Ford Foundation established the first bilingual education program in the United States for the children of Cuban exiles in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 boosted immigration from Hispanic American countries, and in 1968, Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act. Most of these one million Cuban Americans settled in southern and central Florida, while other Cubans live in the Northeastern United States; most are fluent in Spanish. In the city of Miami today Spanish is the first language mostly due to Cuban immigration. Likewise, the Nicaraguan Revolution and subsequent Contra War created a migration of Nicaraguans fleeing the Sandinista government and civil war to the United States in the late 1980s. Most of these Nicaraguans migrated to Florida and California.

The exodus of Salvadorans was a result of both economic and political problems. The largest immigration wave occurred as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s, in which 20 to 30 percent of El Salvador's population emigrated. About 50 percent, or up to 500,000 of those who escaped, headed to the United States, which was already home to over 10,000 Salvadorans, making Salvadoran Americans the fourth-largest Hispanic and Latino American group, after the Mexican-American majority, stateside Puerto Ricans, and Cubans.

As civil wars engulfed several Central American countries in the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled their country and came to the United States. Between 1980 and 1990, the Salvadoran immigrant population in the United States increased nearly fivefold from 94,000 to 465,000. The number of Salvadoran immigrants in the United States continued to grow in the 1990s and 2000s as a result of family reunification and new arrivals fleeing a series of natural disasters that hit El Salvador, including earthquakes and hurricanes. By 2008, there were about 1.1 million Salvadoran immigrants in the United States.

Until the 20th century, there was no clear record of the number of Venezuelans who emigrated to the United States. Between the 18th and early 19th centuries, there were many European immigrants who went to Venezuela, only to later migrate to the United States along with their children and grandchildren who were born and/or grew up in Venezuela speaking Spanish. From 1910 to 1930, it is estimated that over 4,000 South Americans each year emigrated to the United States; however, there are few specific figures indicating these statistics. Many Venezuelans settled in the United States with hopes of receiving a better education, only to remain there following graduation. They are frequently joined by relatives. However, since the early 1980s, the reasons for Venezuelan emigration have changed to include hopes of earning a higher salary and due to the economic fluctuations in Venezuela which also promoted an important migration of Venezuelan professionals to the US. In the 2000s, dissident Venezuelans migrated to South Florida, especially the of Doral and Weston. Other main states with Venezuelan American populations are, according to the 1990 census, New York, California, Texas (adding to their existing Hispanic populations), New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland.

Refugees from Spain also migrated to the U.S. due to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and political instability under the regime of Francisco Franco that lasted until 1975. The majority of Spaniards settled in Florida, Texas, California, New Jersey, New York City, Chicago, and Puerto Rico.

The publication of data by the United States Census Bureau in 2003 revealed that Hispanics were the largest minority in the United States and caused a flurry of press speculation in Spain about the position of Spanish in the United States. That year, the Instituto Cervantes, an organization created by the Spanish government in 1991 to promote Spanish language around the globe, established a branch in New York.

In total, there were 36,995,602 people aged five or older in the United States who spoke Spanish at home (12.8% of the total U.S. population) according to the 2010 census.

Between 2000 and 2015, the proportion of Hispanics who spoke Spanish at home decreased from 78 to 73 percent. As noted above, the only major exception was the territory of Puerto Rico, where Spanish was proclaimed the first official language. In Puerto Rico, it is the most commonly used language, the language of local governments, and the language of instruction in schools and universities.

Spanish is the most widely taught second language in the United States.

Possibly at least partially as a result of a language barrier, children from Spanish-speaking households in the United States experience 50% higher rates of obesity than those in English-speaking households, according to the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Families may not have access to health education materials or resources in Spanish, and food labels are typically in English only.

By 1870, English-speakers were a majority in California; in 1879, the state promulgated a new constitution with a clause under which all official proceedings were to be conducted exclusively in English, which remained in effect until 1966. In 1986, California voters added a new constitutional clause by referendum:

Spanish remains widely spoken throughout the state, and many government forms, documents, and services are bilingual in English and Spanish. Although all official proceedings are to be conducted in English, the California courts system offers accommodations to Spanish speakers:

In addition, there are several other major cities in Florida with a sizable percentage of the population able to speak Spanish, most notably Tampa (18%) and Orlando (16.6%). Ybor City, a historic neighborhood near downtown Tampa, was founded and is populated chiefly by Spanish and Cuban immigrants. Most Latinos in Florida are of Cuban descent and live in metropolitan Miami, followed by those of Puerto Rican origin in Miami and Orlando, and Mexican origin in Tampa, Fort Myers and Naples.

Because of its relative isolation from other Spanish-speaking areas over most of its 400-year existence, New Mexico Spanish, particularly the Spanish of northern New Mexico and Colorado has retained many elements of 16th- and 17th-century Spanish lost in other varieties and has developed its own vocabulary. In addition, it contains many words from Nahuatl, the language that is still spoken by the Nahua people in Mexico. New Mexican Spanish also contains loanwords from the Pueblo languages of the upper Rio Grande, Mexican-Spanish words ( mexicanismos), and borrowings from English. Grammatical changes include the loss of the second-person plural verb form, changes in verb endings, particularly in the preterite, and the partial merger of the second and third conjugations.

There are many Spanish-language radio stations throughout Kansas, like KYYS in the Kansas City area as well as various Spanish-language newspapers and television stations throughout the state. Several towns in Kansas boast Spanish-English dual language immersion schools in which students are instructed in both languages for varying amounts of time. Examples include Horace Mann Elementary in Wichita, named after the Horace Mann, and Buffalo Jones Elementary in Garden City, named after Charles "Buffalo" Jones, a frontiersman, bison preservationist, and cofounder of Garden City.

Spanish is currently the most widely taught language after English in American secondary schools and higher education.Richard I. Brod . AFL Bulletin. Vol. 19, no. 2 (January 1988): 39–44 More than 790,000 university students were enrolled in Spanish courses in the autumn of 2013, with Spanish the most widely taught foreign language in American colleges and universities. Some 50.6% of the over 1.5 million U.S. students enrolled in foreign-language courses took Spanish, followed by French language (12.7%), American Sign Language (7%), German language (5.5%), Italian language (4.6%), Japanese (4.3%), Chinese language (3.9%), Arabic (2.1%), and Latin (1.7%). These totals remain relatively small in relation to the total U.S. population.

The 1930s were boom years.Jorge Reina Schement, “The Origins of Spanish-Language Radio: The Case of San Antonio, Texas,” Journalism History 4:2 (1977): 56–61. The early success depended on the concentrated geographical audience in Texas and the Southwest.Félix F. Gutiérrez and Jorge Reina Schement, Spanish-Language Radio in the Southwestern United States (Austin: UT Center for Mexican American Studies, 1979). American stations were close to Mexico, which enabled a steady circular flow of entertainers, executives and technicians and stimulated the creative initiatives of Hispanic radio executives, brokers, and advertisers. Ownership was increasingly concentrated in the 1960s and 1970s. The industry sponsored the now-defunct trade publication Sponsor from the late 1940s to 1968.Andrew Paxman, "The Rise of US Spanish-Language Radio From 'Dead Airtime' to Consolidated Ownership (1920s–1970s)." Journalism History 44.3 (2018). Spanish-language radio has influenced American and Latino discourse on key current affairs issues such as citizenship and immigration.Dolores Inés Casillas, Sounds of belonging: US Spanish-language radio and public advocacy (NYU Press, 2014).

The Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (North American Academy of the Spanish Language) tracks the developments of the Spanish spoken in the United States and the influences of English.

• Mexican Spanish: the US–Mexico border, throughout the Southwest from California to Texas, as well as in Chicago, but becoming ubiquitous throughout the Continental United States. Standard Mexican Spanish is often used and taught as the standard dialect of Spanish in the Continental United States.
• Caribbean Spanish: Spanish as spoken by Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans. It is largely heard throughout the Northeast and Florida, especially New York City and Miami, and in other cities in the East.
• Central American Spanish: Spanish as spoken by Hispanics with origins in Central American countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. It is largely heard in major cities throughout California and Texas, as well as Washington, DC; New York; and Miami.
• Spanish language in South America: Spanish as spoken by Hispanics with origins in South American countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Bolivia. It is largely heard in major cities throughout New York State, California, Texas, and Florida.
• Colonial Spanish: Spanish as spoken by descendants of Spanish colonists and early Mexicans before the United States expanded and annexed the Southwest and other areas.
• Californian Spanish (1769–present): California, especially the Central Coast
• Isleño Spanish (1783–present): St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana
• Sabine River Spanish: Parts of Sabine and Natchitoches Parishes, Louisiana, and the Moral community west of Nacogdoches. Moribund, originated from rural Mexican Spanish.
• New Mexican Spanish: Central and north-central New Mexico and south-central Colorado and the border regions of Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado

Many Spanish speakers in the US speak it as a heritage language. Many of these heritage speakers are , or transitional bilinguals, which means they spoke Spanish in early childhood but largely switched to an English-speaking environment. They typically have a strong passive command of the language, but never fully acquired it. Other, fluent heritage speakers have not undergone such a total shift from Spanish to English in their immediate family.

Transitional bilinguals often produce errors which are rarely found among native Spanish speakers but which are common among second-language learners. Transitional bilinguals often face difficulties in Spanish classrooms since teaching materials designed for English monolinguals and those designed for fluent heritage speakers are both inadequate.

The vowel system of Spanish speakers in the US may also be affected by English influence. For example, can be fronted.

Much of the variation in US Spanish pronunciation reflects the differences between other Spanish dialects and varieties:

• As in most of Hispanic America, and (before and ) are pronounced as , the same way as . Note that seseo (the act of not distinguishing from ) is not only typical of the speech of Latino Americans but is also typical among Hispanic Americans of and Canary Islands.
• Spanish in the Americas usually features yeísmo, with no distinction being made between and as both are pronounced . Yeísmo is an expanding and now dominant feature of Peninsular Spanish as well, particularly in urban speech (Madrid, Toledo) and in Andalusia and the Canary Islands, but is still preserved in some rural areas of northern Spain. Speakers of Rioplatense Spanish pronounce both and as or . The traditional pronunciation of the digraph , , is preserved in some dialects along the Andes range, especially in inland Peru and the highlands of Colombia highlands, northern Argentina, and all of Bolivia and Paraguay.
• Most speakers with ancestors born in the coastal regions may debuccalization or aspirate syllable-final to or entirely drop; this, está ("s/he is") sounds like or , as in southern Spain (Andalusia, Murcia, Castile–La Mancha (except the northeastern part), Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla).
• In many Caribbean dialects, the phonemes and can be exchanged or sound alike at the end of a syllable: caldo > cardo, cardo > caldo. At the end of words, becomes silent, which gives Caribbean Spanish a partial non-rhoticity. That occurs left often happens as well in Ecuador and Chile and is a feature brought from Extremadura and westernmost Andalusia, in Spain.
• In Puerto Rico, besides , , and , syllable-final can be realized as , an influence of American English: "verso"' (verse) can become , besides , , or ; " invierno" (winter) can become , aside from , , or ; and " escarlata" (scarlet) can become , aside from , , or . Word-finally, is usually one of the following:
• a trill, a tap, an approximant, , or silent before a consonant or a pause, as in amo paterno ('paternal love');
• a tap, an approximant, or before a vowel-initial word, as in amo eterno ('eternal love').

1. Word-finally, is frequently velar in American Spanish and pan (bread) is often pronounced . To an English-speaker, the makes pan sound like pang. Velarization of word-final is so widespread in the Americas that only a few regions maintain the alveolar , as in Europe: most of Mexico, Colombia (except for coastal dialects), and Argentina (except for some northern regions). Elsewhere, velarization is common although alveolar word-final appears among some educated speakers, especially in the media or in singing. Velar word-final is also frequent in Spain, especially in the South (Andalusia and the Canary Islands) and in the Northwest: Galicia, Asturias, and León.

• Loan translations such as correr para 'to run for', aplicar para 'to apply for', and soñar de instead of soñar con 'to dream of' frequently occur.
• Expressions with patrás, such as llamar patrás, are widespread. Though these appear to be calques, they likely represent a semantic extension.
• Spanish speakers in the US tend to use estar more often instead of ser. This is an extension of an ongoing trend within Spanish, since historically estar was used far less often. For more information, see Spanish copulas.
• Spanish speakers in the southwest tend to use the morphological future tense exclusively to express grammatical mood. The periphrastic construction 'ir + a + infinitive' is used for speaking about events that will occur in the future.
  (1997). 9780878406494, Georgetown University Press. . ISBN 9780878406494
• In Chicano Spanish varieties, the word has acquired a very wide range of meanings, much like the English word "get".
• While varieties of Spanish in the US have traditionally not used voseo, this feature has been introduced by Central American immigrants. While the children of these immigrants use voseo much less often than their parents, the pronoun vos remains as a symbol of identity. Verbal voseo is often found among linguistically insecure second-generation Salvadoran-Americans in contact with speakers of other varieties, while pronominal voseo is often found among third-generation Salvadoran-Americans who have adopted the tú-related verb forms but maintain the pronoun vos as a symbol of identity.
• Spanish-speakers who are more proficient in English tend to use the subjunctive mood less often. This same preference for the indicative also correlates independently with lower education in Spanish, reflecting variation in monolingual Spanish.
• Disappearance of de (of) in certain expressions, as is the case with Canarian Spanish: esposo Rosa for esposo de Rosa, gofio millo for gofio de millo, etc.
• Doublets of Arabic-Latin synonyms, with the Arabic form being more common in US Spanish, which derives from American Spanish (Hispanic America) and so is influenced by Andalusian Spanish, like Andalusian and Hispanic American alcoba for standard peninsular habitación or dormitorio ('bedroom') or alhaja for standard joya ('jewel').
• See List of words having different meanings in Spain and Hispanic America.